The solace of rebelling
against rest
away from
my maternal acres,
free before
tomorrow’s working day,
before the gipsyman time:
Free, I will not slow down
nor curb my abandon
I dream a cabin,
I dream a jail
then awake
coaxed closer to the road,
a tribal sort of reinvention,
a tribunal of sorts
written on the interstate
This is why we travel,
all travel a means
to go on thirsting
through the dry world
in multitudes
up and down the coast
We speed away then
speed back home
broke, hungry,
an ocean retreats to our right
a mountain erodes on the left
in between,
the ragged miles,
the traces of motion
Eventually we lay
in familiar tombs,
the sigh, the pulse
of night hours passing,
Reborn in our formulaic dawn.
Phil Lane has lived in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and the Netherlands. He now lives in North Carolina and works as a bookseller in Raleigh.